Abu Dhabi: A hotline to report child abuse was launched by Lt General Shaikh Saif Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior during the #WeProtect: Global Online Children Sexual Abuse Summit in the capital on Monday.
By dialing 116 111, visiting the ministry website, or using the Hemayati smartphone app, people can quickly receive help in situations involving transgressions against children and also enure that the victims to also receive psychological help if needed.
The exploitation of children has increased by 1,500 per cent globally since 1988 and the number of websites that contain sexual content of children has doubled in 2012-15, attendees at the #WeProtect: Global Online Children Sexual Abuse Summit heard in the capital on Monday.
Under the patronage of General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, the event was inaugurated by Shaikh Saif who said at the opening: “We are gathered here to protect the most valuable thing we own, a treasure unlike any other, our children. We cannot succeed in doing that alone, but we must work together to create a global environment that is safe and stable and which directs its resources to excel in child protection.”
In fact, the scale of violence against children has been reported to be greater now than ever before, a Unicef official said at the Summit.
“Last year Unicef published a report that showed the devastating dimensions of violence. It found, for example that around 120 million girls globally, more than one in 10, have experienced sexual violence,” said Fatoumata Ndiaye, Unicef Deputy Executive Director.
Summit attendees also heard in a that one in every four girls and one in six boys will experience sexual abuse before the age of 18 and 73 per cent of those do not tell anybody within the first year of the incident and less than half do not disclose the exploitation for at least five years.
The Ministry of Interior offers psychological help for young victims of sexual abuse along with a number of services to complainants.
“It is difficult to think of a crime more monstrous than the sexual abuse of children – online or offline. It inflicts physical wounds that can heal with time and psychological ones that often do not. It is wrong and we are here to end it together by building on the work that we started at the #WeProtect Summit in London last year,” Fatoumata added.
